Sick of the French moaning that their taxes are too high, the country's budget minister has invited the public to sort out France's troublesome economy by playing an internet game.

From next month, Jean-François Copé will invite up to 10,000 people at a time to log on to his new web game, Cyberbudget, and experience his economic dilemmas for themselves.

Their seemingly unenviable mission is to manage the country's budget while avoiding the pitfalls of French national debt and its bloated public sector. For four years, France exceeded the European Union's budget deficit limit of 3% of GDP, only coming in on target last year. The country has one of Europe's highest tax burdens: in 2003, it was 43.4% of GDP, compared with 35.6% for Britain.

"The idea is that when we cut taxes, we can't do it without creating deficits," Mr Copé told France 2 Television. "In this game each French person can pretend they are the budget minister and make decisions to understand how much each [ministry's] budget costs - education spending, military spending, how it's all organised - and see what kind of decision we can make when we want to cut taxes."

Mr Copé said he was inspired by the Japanese government, which last year launched a cartoon-illustrated game on its website with the invitation: "Let's become finance minister and make a budget!" The challenge to deal with Japan's staggering public debt soon became the most popular page on the finance ministry's website.

"The French demand reform but start gnashing their teeth as soon as it means making savings," Mr Copé told the daily Le Parisien. "So the idea is to familiarise them with the state's budget."

He said his department had been careful not to make the game too technical, so anyone could play. It would be as realistic as possible, including presenting the budget to parliament for approval, he added.